美国国家公共电台 NPR After Stephon Clark Shooting, Questions Remain About Police Use Of Force

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Video of the death of Stephon Clark in Sacramento has rekindled 1 anger over police shootings of unarmed people. Some are asking whether the protests and media attention of the last few years really made any difference in how police use deadly force. NPR's law enforcement correspondent Martin Kaste has been exploring this. And a note - his report includes audio of police officers firing at Clark.

MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE 2: The Sacramento shooting is still being investigated, and it'll be a while before there are any official conclusions about whether the officers acted legally and properly. But the videos from that night are shocking. People keep remarking especially on the number of bullets fired.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Show me your hands. Gun. Gun. Gun. (Gunshots).

KASTE: Twenty shots by two officers in less than five seconds. Seven of those bullets caused major wounds. That's according to Bennet Omalu, the doctor who did an independent autopsy 3 for Clark's family.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BENNET OMALU: Each one of these bullets independently possessed 4 a fatal capacity. All he needed to have died was just one of the seven.

KASTE: To the average person, this looks like overkill. But the truth is, this is how cops are taught to shoot. Massad Ayoob is a respected firearms trainer.

MASSAD AYOOB: It's not a tennis game where you smack 5 the ball, and you say, OK, your serve. If you have to shoot somebody, you want him down before he shoots you, before he shoots one of the people you swore an oath to protect.

KASTE: That means you keep pulling the trigger until the threat is neutralized 6, to use the common euphemism 7. Also, cops today often have semi-automatic handguns, which hold more bullets than revolvers did, so when they decide to shoot, more bullets go down range.

There was a time when the training was different. Cops used to be taught to shoot, stop and assess. But Lance LoRusso says that method was abandoned in the '80s. He's a former officer, now a lawyer who specializes in the use of force.

LANCE LORUSSO: The advent 8 of video showed us that bad guys don't react to bullets the way they do in the movies. There's videos that I can show you where people are shot dead set in the chest, and they're still coming at the officer or going at another party.

KASTE: And that's why we're not likely to see a change in the number of bullets that cops fire. But for those people who've been trying to change policing since Ferguson, the number of bullets fired matters less than how often this happens.

TRACEY MEARES: These incidents are still occurring, and the obvious thing to say is that there is still work to do.

KASTE: Tracey Meares is a Yale law professor who served on President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which was formed after Ferguson. She says on the surface, it can look as though nothing much has changed. For instance, it's still rare to get a criminal conviction against police officers after a shooting. But she says you have to look beyond the courtroom and at the new policies being adopted by police departments.

MEARES: What we've seen in the last couple of years - training about de-escalation, training about crisis intervention 9. All of these things are policies that eventually will have an impact on how courts interpret the reasonableness of the legality of police officers' use of force.

KASTE: But that kind of change is gradual. Others want to rewrite the laws now. At the state capitol in California, the ACLU's Lizzie Buchen is pushing a bill to raise the bar for when police can use deadly force.

LIZZIE BUCHEN: When a civilian 10 is approached by a police officer with a gun drawn 11, they might be scared. They might panic. And under current law, an officer can assume that they are armed and kill them if they flinch 12 or if they move in any way that could be construed 13 as dangerous or reaching for a weapon.

KASTE: The ACLU's bill would reserve deadly force for times when it's, quote, "necessary." Right now, the state allows it when it's reasonable. A tougher standard may mean police will be asked to take more chances with their own lives, but Buchen says it tips the balance toward protecting, as she puts it, all lives. Martin Kaste, NPR News.